Workers are suffering Christmas misery after one of the borough’s biggest employers axed 60 jobs.

Express Gifts employees face an uncertain festive period after bosses announced the redundancies.

The first collective consultation meeting will take place on Friday.

The home shopping firm, which has its head office on Henry Street in Church, has taken the action in a bid to cut costs.

A company statement read: "We regret to announce that in order to reduce ongoing costs in today’s very competitive trading market, we have to announce a limited number of redundancies.

"These will particularly affect the volume driven areas of the company in the Accrington warehouses, data preparation, customer administration and customer services departments, with some very limited redundancies in buying and payroll."

There will also be a small number of redundancies in the Kleeneze offices at Clayton Business Park in Clayton-le-Moors.

The names of the people who will be made redundant are expected to be announced on January 28, 2011.

A company spokesman said: "It is expected that the majority of the redundancies will take effect from early February 2011, although this may change and may be slightly later. It is anticipated that there will be about 60 redundancies in total."

Express Gifts is the largest company within national retailers Findel plc and provides a personal shopping service to around 1.5million customers each year.

Kleeneze is a leading network marketing company specialising in household and health and beauty products across the country.